The Men Behind the Eichler Homes: A Lecture

It’s an evocative name, Eichler. Beyond the suggestive Aryan acoustics, it calls to mind (for architecture buffs, anyway) the midcentury modern homes so synonymous with certain facets of the California lifestyle. Eichler was a developer who made a career out of bringing modern postwar architecture to the general public, through tract housing—the so-called Eichler homes and Eichler communities, over 11,000 in California.

Eichler, however, was no architect. But hee did hire them, and some famous ones at that: Bob Anshen and Steven Allen, for starters. If you’d like to hear about the others, and the working relationships that gave rise to a distinctive style, there’s a lecture this Friday on that very subject, courtesy of the Friends of the Gamble House. For their last lecture of the season, they’ve invited David Weinstein, an architectural journalist and author who has written extensively about the artfulness of the Eichler homes, to talk about these quintessential ’50s subdivisions.

If Eichlers really float your boat, there’s a tour of an Eichler community out in the Balboa Highlands of Granada Hills the following day, Saturday the 14th, from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.